CHAPTER 28 THE GHOSTS OF OUR BLOOD POV SYBIL #2
And my brother is currently sitting on a tactical raft, speeding toward this island, absolutely determined to put a bullet through Thayer’s brain.
A heavy, dark shadow completely eclipses the sunlight pouring through the study doors.
I turn around, my chest heaving with jagged, hyperventilating gasps.
Thayer is standing in the doorway. He is holding the encrypted tablet in his right hand. He looks at me, his eyes dropping to the earpiece resting on the desk, and then rising to meet my completely shattered gaze.
He knows I heard it.
"You knew," I whisper, the accusation tearing from my throat, completely raw and broken. "You knew they were coming. You knew who was leading them."
Thayer doesn't flinch. He steps into the room, entirely kicking the heavy glass door shut behind him. The lock engages with a solid, definitive click.
"I heard the transmission last night while you were sleeping," he states, his voice a low, demonic hum that completely lacks any apology.
"I have a brother," I choke out, my hands flying up to cover my mouth, tears of pure, unadulterated shock streaming down my face. "My father lied to me my entire life. And you were going to let me walk into a firefight without telling me that the man trying to kill you is my own blood!"
"He is not your blood!" Thayer roars, the sudden, violent explosion of his volume completely shaking the weapons on the desk.
He closes the distance between us in two massive, predatory strides.
He grabs my upper arms, his grip bruising, completely refusing to let me pull away.
"He is a federal agent who just authorized lethal force against you!
He called you a compromised hostage, Sybil!
He doesn't know you. He doesn't care about you.
Arthur disowned him a decade ago when he joined the Bureau.
Hayes has been building a RICO case against the Syndicate for years, waiting to use your captivity as his righteous crusade.
He doesn't want to save you, Sybil. He wants to use you as his star witness to put me on death row, and I am going to completely dismantle him. "
"He's my family!" I scream, violently shoving against his chest.
"I AM YOUR FAMILY!" Thayer bellows, his pale gray eyes entirely consumed by a dark, psychotic obsession.
He hauls me completely flush against his massive frame, completely ignoring the agonizing groan of his torn shoulder.
"I am the only family you have ever had!
I am the only one who didn't sell you, who didn't abandon you, who didn't lie to you about your own existence!
I burned my world to the ground for you, and I will slaughter every single federal agent on this ocean before I let them take you away from me! "
"You lied to me!" I sob, my fingernails digging desperately into his arms. "You were going to shoot my brother in front of me!"
"Because if you hesitated for a single millisecond," Thayer hisses, his face hovering mere inches from mine, his hot, feverish breath washing over my tear-stained skin, "if you looked at him and saw a ghost from your past instead of a threat, he would put a bullet in your chest to get to me.
I hid it from you because your empathy is a liability we cannot afford today. "
The absolute, terrifying truth of his words completely paralyzes me.
He is a sociopath. He operates entirely on the cold, brutal mathematics of survival. To him, my brother is not a tragedy; he is simply an obstacle that must be violently removed.
And the most horrific, soul-destroying reality of all?
I don't want Thayer to die.
Even knowing the man on the boat shares my DNA, even knowing the depth of Thayer’s manipulation, the thought of his heavy, beautiful body bleeding out on the white sand completely shatters my mind. The trauma bond is absolute. It is a thick, impenetrable root completely tangled around my heart.
I stop fighting him. My hands slide from his arms, my fingers curling weakly into the fabric of his black t-shirt. My head drops forward, my forehead coming to rest heavily against his collarbone.
"I can't do this," I weep, completely broken by the impossible, catastrophic choice. "I can't watch you kill him. I can't let him kill you."
"You don't have to watch," Thayer murmurs, the demonic roar completely vanishing, entirely replaced by a dark, possessive velvet.
His right hand slides up to cup the back of my head, his fingers tangling securely in my dark hair.
"You just have to survive, Sybil. You let the monster do the bleeding. "
He pulls me tighter against his chest, completely enveloping me in the heavy, intoxicating scent of his skin.
The air in the study is suffocating, thick with the adrenaline of the impending war. Thayer’s heartbeat is a frantic, heavy drum against my cheek. He knows we are out of time. The Zodiacs are already cutting through the waves. The tactical teams are already establishing a perimeter in the jungle.
He lifts my face, his rough thumbs aggressively wiping the tears from my cheeks. His eyes are burning with a desperate, feral heat.
"If I drop today," Thayer whispers, the dark vow completely hanging in the air between us. "If they manage to put me in the ground... you do not surrender. You take the Glock, you run to the subterranean vault, and you lock the door. You let them starve before you let them put you in handcuffs."
"You aren't going to die," I gasp, my hands frantically gripping his jaw, completely refusing to accept the possibility.
"I am a man, Sybil," he murmurs, a dark, breathless smile curving his pale lips. "I bleed just like the rest of them. And my shoulder is failing. If I cannot hold the line..."
"No!" I scream, entirely cutting him off.
I surge upward, crashing my mouth down onto his.
It is an act of pure, unadulterated desperation.
It isn't a kiss; it is a violent collision of terror, grief, and the absolute refusal to let the world win.
I part his lips with bruising force, my tongue completely invading his mouth, entirely demanding the heat and the life that is stubbornly clinging to his bones.
Thayer groans, a harsh, guttural sound of pure surrender. He grabs my hips, completely lifting me off the stone floor. I wrap my legs instinctively around his waist, anchoring myself entirely to his massive frame.
He doesn't carry me to the bedroom. We don't have time.
He slams my back entirely against the heavy teakwood desk, scattering the loaded magazines and the Pelican cases. The cold wood bites into my spine, but the pain is entirely eradicated by the immense, burning furnace of his body pressing flush against mine.
He breaks the kiss, his chest heaving violently, his gray eyes entirely black.
"You belong to me," he snarls, his right hand gripping the hem of my oversized dress shirt.
He rips it upward, completely exposing my bare chest to the cool air of the study. He doesn't bother with foreplay. He doesn't bother with worship. This is a violent, primal claiming. It is the absolute, terrified need to completely imprint himself onto my soul before the bullets start flying.
He tears the button of my tactical pants open, shoving the heavy fabric and my lace underwear down my thighs. I kick them away, completely freeing my legs.
He unzips his trousers with frantic, one-handed desperation.
He positions himself at my entrance. He stares down at me, his face a terrifying mask of bruised exhaustion and obsessive hunger.
"If this is the end of the world," Thayer whispers, his voice a dark, lethal hum, "I am going out exactly where I belong."
He drives his hips forward, burying his thick, heavy length completely inside me with one ruthless, devastating thrust.
A sharp, high cry entirely tears from my throat. My internal muscles clamp down violently, completely accepting the massive intrusion. The pain of the unyielding entry is instantly swallowed by a heavy, scalding wave of absolute fullness.
Thayer goes completely rigid against me, his head falling forward to rest heavily on my shoulder. A harsh, ragged groan vibrates from his chest, his uninjured hand gripping my hip with bone-crushing force.
"Sybil," he breathes, his skin slick with a cold, feverish sweat.
He begins to move. The rhythm is not the slow, punishing pace of the motel room.
It is a frantic, desperate, incredibly violent tempo.
He pulls back almost completely before slamming his hips down, driving himself to the hilt over and over again.
The heavy, wet slap of our bodies colliding echoes loudly over the distant sound of the ocean.
I completely surrender to the violence of his possession. The desk digs into my back, the heavy iron of the assault rifles pressing against my arms, completely surrounding us in the tools of our impending destruction. The sheer friction ignites a blinding, white-hot fire in the center of my core.
My head tosses from side to side, short, fractured cries completely escaping my lips.
"Take it," he growls, his teeth grazing the sensitive skin of my neck, entirely marking me with his bite. "Take all of it."
I wrap my legs tighter around his waist, completely locking him inside me. I want to pull him entirely into my own skin, to shield him from the FBI, from my brother, from the absolute hell that is about to rain down on this island.
The climax hits me with the catastrophic force of a bomb.
My vision completely whites out. A loud, melodic scream rips from my throat as my inner walls spasm violently, repeatedly milking his heavy length in tight, scalding waves. I completely lose control of my body, my fingernails digging brutally into his back, my chest heaving against his.
Thayer roars my name, a dark, primal sound of absolute victory that entirely drowns out the hum of the air conditioning.
He drives into me one final, devastating time, entirely burying himself to the root.
His massive body locks rigidly against mine as he pours his heavy, hot release deeply into my core.
He collapses heavily on top of me, entirely trapping me between his chest and the desk. We lie in the absolute, ringing silence of the study, completely fighting to drag oxygen back into our burning lungs.
He presses a desperate, lingering kiss to my damp forehead, his chest heaving violently against my breasts.
Then, the absolute silence is completely shattered.
The high-pitched, deafening wail of the perimeter proximity alarms violently erupts through the villa's speaker system. The red emergency lights built into the ceiling begin to strobe wildly, painting the white stone in flashes of violent crimson.
The cage has been breached.
Thayer instantly pulls out of me. The feral lover vanishes entirely, instantly replaced by the lethal, untouchable Don. He zips his trousers, his face turning into an impenetrable mask of cold, calculating murder.
He grabs an assault rifle from the desk, slamming a heavy magazine into the receiver with a sharp, mechanical clack.
He turns to me. He throws the heavy dark shirt at my chest.
"Dress," Thayer commands, his voice completely devoid of emotion.
He grabs the suppressed Glock and presses it into my hand.
"The ghosts are here, Sybil," he murmurs, his pale eyes completely dead, looking toward the glass doors of the study. "Let's go feed them."